Guest Post: WikiLeaks’ Debut in Japan

[Following on from Corey Wallace's post pointing out Asahi Shimbun's Wikileaks articles, we have a guest post comes from Hisanori Hirata, an editor at a major Japanese weekly magazine and student of Strategic Studies. You can see his previous guest posts here]

Few people have any idea that Asahi Shimbun is analyzing 7,000 Japan-related official telegrams offered by WikiLeaks. Asahi’s political stance is to the left (not necessarily liberal). Moreover, it is most popular among Japanese intellectuals, although the number of copies sold nationally is second to the Yomiuri Shimbun. So, in this sense, as some compare it to the New York Times, another Wikileaks partner, the collaboration with Wikileaks itself should be not surprising.

On May 5th, Asahi reported a scoop with a title, ‘Numbers inflated in Marine relocation plan to increase political impact’, in front page story. The subtitle reads “Analysis of WikiLeaks’ 7000 cables proves a manipulation of burden rate.”

According the article, the cables were sent from the US embassy in Japan to US State Department in December 2008. At that time, the Japanese and US governments were negotiating the expense burden for the Guam transfer agreement. The negotiation was based on the Japan-US Roadmap for Realignment Implementation (Roadmap), with which Tokyo and Washington agreed to transfer approximately eight thousand marines in Okinawa to US bases in Guam by 2014.

The cables show that US added $1 billion in construction costs for military roads; the US Embassy explained, “Japan’s share was made to appear smaller with the inclusion of an unnecessary project” to the US side of the balance sheet. The Japanese government accepted this. In fact, by this padding, Japan’s financial burden fell below 60 % of total cost. In the original plan, it shared two-thirds of $9.2 billion.

Costs weren’t the only things being fiddled with. The cables say, in terms of a planned number of transfers, 8,000 marines and 9,000 of their families are padded ones in order to “optimize political value” to Japan. The numbers have been labeled exaggerated before, and the Japanese government has denied such criticism. However, the cables prove the criticism right.

In interviews with Asahi, Japanese Foreign and Defense ministry officials replied in anonymity, “Our government’s policy on the issue is ‘no comment.’”

Does this scoop have any impact on the Japan-US relationship or Japan’s domestic politics? The answer is probably “No.” The novelty of these new facts brought by the cables does not exceed what we already imagined. Despite the difference in timeframe, the impact will probably be similar to when the secret pact on US nuclear transit to Japan in 1960s was revealed by declassified documents in the US in March last year. Regarding Japan’s domestic politics, the padding was done under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s government, and the present ruling party (Democratic Party of Japan, DPJ) and the opposition are currently to busy dealing with the fallout from the earthquake to press the issue. On the other hand, as a preliminary collaboration between a Japanese newspaper and WikiLeaks, Asahi’s scoop is epoch-making.

Share:

A former contributor to World Intelligence (Japan Military Review), James Simpson joined Japan Security Watch in 2011, migrating with his blog Defending Japan. He has a Masters in Security Studies from Aberystwyth University and is currently living in Kawasaki, Japan.
His primary interests include the so-called 'normalization' of Japanese security (i.e. militarization), and the political impact of the abduction issue with North Korea.
James Simpson has 254 post(s) on Japan Security Watch

5 comments

For me, while the attitudes US officials exhibited towards the DPJ are not particularly a revelation, although galling, the biggest outrage are the snippets of insight into Japanese bureaucratic thinking (ie telling the US not to be too flexible!) – amazing that they could be so insubordinate in a democracy! If such news was broken here in NZ there would be severe consequences. I suspect like yourself however, maybe not in Japan(?)

Gerald Curtis' 'The Logic of Japanese Power' gives an excellent look at the Japanese bureaucratic mindset. Sabotage of elected officials and pursuit of independently established ministerial policy (e.g. within MoFa an apparently widespread view that the Ministry exists specifically to safeguard the US-Japan alliance) is very much par for the course.

This isn't surprising to me. Before the number fabrication was exposed by wikileaks this time, some local people pointed out the falsehood in the base alignment pact that the U.S. and Japan made. The former Ginowan mayor, Yoichi Iha, worked hard on investigating the actual numbers of Marines and air crafts in Okinawa to prove the calculation "18,000 – 8,000 = reducing the burden of Okinawa" was wrong. Tomohiro Yara, chief editor of Okinawa Times- one of the biggest local newspapers- wrote a book called Alliance in the Air, (Sajo no domei, 砂上の同盟), reporting that the Marine Corps did not necessarily have to be stationed in Okinawa.
As James says, this won’t change the Japanese government’s attitude toward Okinawa and the Futenma issue because Japan is facing more urgent issues. I feel it is a sort of taboo to discus the issues of Okinawan bases—the government or Japan as a whole is saying, “it is time to deal with radiation, electricity, and disaster relief!” For Okinawa, longer way to go.